NASCAR Cup Series Is Done Racing on Dirt for the Foreseeable Future

• There won’t be a dirt track on the 2024 Cup schedule.

• In October 2020, Richard Petty told Autoweek having NASCAR Cup Series racing on dirt was like “taking a professional football team and going back to play at a high school field.”

• NASCAR raced has raced on dirt at Bristol Motor Speedway since 2021.

Dirt track racing is now dust in the wind for NASCAR’s Cup Series.

NASCAR chief operating officer Steve O’Donnell says there won’t be a dirt track on the 2024 Cup schedule. However, he won’t rule it out forever.

“I think we will always talk to the industry and (look at) what might be available out there,” O’Donnell says. “A lot of lessons learned, but for next year, we’re tabling it.”

Taking the series to a track built specifically for dirt racing is “something we’d look at—but not in the near future,” O’Donnell says.

O’Donnell confirmed a dirt track’s absence from Cup’s 2024 schedule after Bristol Motor Speedway president Jerry Caldwell announced the tough half-mile track’s spring race—the Food City 500—would return to its traditional concrete surface. It’s a move that’s been advocated by fans and drivers.

Corey LaJoie was on stage in the Fan Zone outside the track when fans were told Bristol’s spring race wouldn’t be a dirt event next year. LaJoie said the fans who were excited were in the majority and he told them they had better support the change.

“I said, ‘You guys have to come to the race or else they’ll put ice or gravel or some sort of other funky substance on top of the race track to make it a flash in the pan,’” LaJoie says. “So, the people who are clapping, you better be here in the spring with your butt in the seat, so either the race doesn’t move somewhere else, or they don’t figure out some other substance to put on it.”

Converting the Bristol half-mile speedway to a dirt track required 2,700 dump truck loads of dirt. After the event, a huge removal operation that included power washing every grandstand seat and the suite windows was needed to get the track ready for future races. The dirt track preparation and then the cleanup took several months and was quite expensive.

During an interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s On Track, Bristol's Caldwell said the Bristol dirt track venture was “successful.”